*****Important Mumia Abu Jamal Update-Free Mumia

*****Important  Mumia Abu Jamal Update-Free Mumia

 

Click below to link to the Partisan Defense Committee Web site.

http://www.partisandefense.org/

Commentary

The legendary social commentator and stand up comic Lenny Bruce, no stranger to the American ‘justice’ system himself, once reportedly said that in the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls. The truth of that statement came home on Thursday March 27, 2008 as a panel of the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals voted two to one to uphold Mumia’s conviction.

The only question left is that of resentencing- the death penalty or, perhaps worst, life in prison without parole. I have not yet read the decision but we are now a long way away from the possibility of a retrial-the narrow legal basis for even appealing in the legal system in the first place. Know this- in the end it will be in the streets and factories through the efforts of the international labor movement and other progressive forces that Mumia will be freed. That is the only way, have no illusions otherwise, whatever the next legal steps might be.

*****

Some facts about the case from the PDC (2006):

Mumia Is an Innocent Man Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Abolish the Racist Death Penalty   Mumia Abu-Jamal has been on death row for nearly 24 years, falsely convicted of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. Mumia Abu-Jamal is innocent and mountains of evidence show this, including the confession of another man, Arnold Beverly, to the murder. All the elements of the capitalist “justice” system colluded in framing up this former Black Panther and MOVE supporter because he is an eloquent and defiant spokesman for the oppressed. The fight to free Mumia has now reached a critical juncture. Last December, the federal appeals court put Mumia’s case on a “fast track” for decision, marking the last stages of the legal proceedings. Both Mumia and prosecutors are appealing decisions made in 2001 by U.S. District Court judge William Yohn, who overturned the death sentence but upheld every aspect of Mumia’s frame-up conviction. The state is as determined as ever to execute Mumia and has appealed. He has been barred by the courts from presenting evidence that he is innocent. But the district attorney filed legal papers in the federal appeals court in April, opening its case with a venomous, lying statement to portray Mumia as a cop-killer who must be executed. In a short time, even as soon as six months, the court could decide what is next for Mumia: death, life in prison or more legal proceedings. Mumia was locked up on death row in 1982 based on lying testimony extorted by the cops without a shred of physical evidence. The judge at his trial, Albert Sabo—known as the “King of Death Row”—was overheard by a court stenographer saying, “I’m going to help ’em fry the n----r.” Rigging the jury to exclude black people, the prosecution incited jurors with the grotesque lie that Mumia’s membership in the Panthers as a teenager proved he was committed to kill a cop “all the way back then.” The 1982 conviction was secured with arguments that the jury could disregard any doubts about Mumia’s guilt because he would have “appeal after appeal.” In nearly two decades of appeals, each and every court has rejected the reams of documented evidence of the blatant frame-up of Mumia. For over four years, Pennsylvania state as well as federal courts have refused to even consider the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed Faulkner. The execution of Stanley Tookie Williams by the state of California in December casts an ominous shadow. The legal lynching of Williams, which provoked an outcry nationally and internationally, signaled the determination of the U.S. capitalist rulers to fortify their machinery of death in the face of growing reticence in the population over how the death penalty is applied. Mumia Abu-Jamal, America’s foremost political prisoner, is the executioners’ number one target. California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger made this clear when, in denying clemency for Williams, he cited the fact that Williams’ 1998 book, Life in Prison, was dedicated to—among others—Mumia Abu-Jamal. Mumia’s case demonstrates what the racist death penalty is all about. It is the lynch rope made legal, the ultimate weapon in the government’s arsenal of repression aimed at the working class and oppressed. A legacy of chattel slavery, the death penalty is maintained in a society where the segregation of the majority of the black population is used as a wedge to divide the laboring masses and perpetuate the rapacious rule of capital. The murderous brutality of the racist capitalist system was displayed for all to see when thousands of people, overwhelmingly black and poor, were left to die in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Mumia’s appeal takes place in the context of the government’s assertion of its “right” to disappear, torture or even assassinate its perceived opponents, and to wiretap and spy on anyone and everyone. In the name of the “war on terror,” rights won through tumultuous class and social battles are being put through the shredder by the Bush administration with the support of the Democratic Party. The purpose is to terrorize and silence any who would stand in the way of the capitalist rulers’ relentless drive for profits and their imperialist adventures, like the colonial occupation of Iraq. As Mumia’s case moves through the final stages of legal proceedings, the fight for his freedom is urgently posed. The Partisan Defense Committee—a class-struggle legal and social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League/U.S.—stands for pursuing every legal avenue in Mumia’s behalf while putting no faith in the “justice” of the capitalist courts. Through publicity and action, we have struggled to mobilize the broadest social forces, centered on the labor movement, to demand Mumia’s freedom and the abolition of the racist death penalty. As Mumia faced execution in August 1995, a mass outpouring of protest nationally and internationally—from civil liberties organizations and such heads of state as South Africa’s Nelson Mandela to trade unions representing millions of workers—succeeded in staying the executioner’s hand. Today we face greater odds. But if undertaken through a mobilization based on the social power of the working class, the fight for Mumia’s freedom would be a giant step forward in the defense of all of us against the increasingly depraved and vicious rulers of this country.   Anatomy of a Frame-Up In the eyes of the capitalist state, from the time Mumia was a 15-year-old spokesman for the Black Panther Party in Philadelphia in 1969, he was a dead man on leave. Then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover pronounced: “The Negro youth and moderate[s] must be made to understand that if they succumb to revolutionary teachings, they will be dead revolutionaries.” This policy was carried out under both the Democratic administration of Lyndon Johnson and his Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, and the Republican Nixon administration. Under the FBI’s “counter-intelligence” program known as COINTELPRO, 38 Panthers were murdered and hundreds of others framed up and railroaded to prison. The 900 pages of FBI files the PDC was able to obtain on Mumia’s behalf, even though highly expurgated, make clear that the FBI and cops used any “dirty trick” in their mission to get him. His every move was tracked and his name put on the FBI’s Security Index, the 1960s version of a “terrorist” hit list. Even with the demise of the Panthers, the state did not call off its vendetta against Mumia. As a journalist known as the “voice of the voiceless,” Mumia’s impassioned defense of black rights continued to enrage them. The Philly cops particularly seethed over his sympathetic coverage of the MOVE organization, which was subjected to an onslaught of state terror. Mumia was targeted for death because of his political beliefs, because of what he wrote, because of what he said. And in the early morning hours of 9 December 1981 at the corner of 13th and Locust Streets in Philadelphia, the cops finally saw their chance. Mumia was driving a cab through the area that night. He heard gunshots. He saw people running, saw his own brother and got out of his cab to help him. Moments later, Mumia was critically wounded by a bullet through the chest. Nearby lay a wounded police officer, Daniel Faulkner. The cops found their long-awaited opportunity and seized on it to frame up Mumia as a “cop killer.” The prosecution’s case rested on three legs, all based on lies: the testimony of “eyewitnesses” coerced through favors and terror; a “confession” purportedly made by Mumia the night of the shooting that was such a blatant hoax that it didn’t surface until months later; and nonexistent ballistics “evidence.” In 2001, this frame-up was completely blown to pieces with Arnold Beverly’s confession that he was the man who shot Faulkner. In a sworn affidavit printed in the PDC pamphlet Mumia Abu-Jamal Is an Innocent Man!, Beverly stated:   “I was hired, along with another guy, and paid to shoot and kill Faulkner. I had heard that Faulkner was a problem for the mob and corrupt policemen because he interfered with the graft and payoffs made to allow illegal activity including prostitution, gambling, drugs without prosecution in the center city area.   “Faulkner was shot in the back and then in the face before Jamal came on the scene. Jamal had nothing to do with the shooting.” Beverly stated that the second shooter also fled the scene. This is supported by a sworn affidavit by Mumia’s brother, Billy Cook, who testified that his friend Kenneth Freeman was a passenger in Cook’s VW at 13th and Locust that night. Freeman later admitted to Cook that he was part of the plan to kill Faulkner and had participated in the shooting and then fled the scene. This is further corroborated by the testimony of a witness at the scene, William Singletary, who said he saw a passenger get out of Cook’s VW, shoot Faulkner and then flee the scene. At least half a dozen witnesses who were on the scene the night of the shooting saw, from several different vantage points, one or more black men flee. Police radio “flashes” right after the shooting reported that the shooters had fled the scene with Faulkner’s gun. Five witnesses, including two cops, describe someone at the scene wearing a green army jacket, which both Beverly and Freeman were wearing that night. Neither Mumia nor Cook wore a green army jacket: Mumia wore a red ski jacket with wide vertical blue stripes and Cook had a blue jacket with brass buttons. Beverly said that Mumia was shot by a cop at the scene. This is confirmed by no less an authority than the state Medical Examiner’s office, whose record written the same morning as the shooting quotes a homicide officer saying that Mumia was shot by “arriving police reinforcements,” not by Faulkner. Other witnesses have corroborated Beverly’s testimony that undercover and uniformed police were in the vicinity at the time of the shooting, which Beverly assumed meant that they were in on the plan to kill Faulkner. One witness, Marcus Cannon, saw two undercover cops on the street across from the shooting. William Singletary also saw “white shirts” (police supervisors) at the scene right after the shots were fired. The prosecution dismisses the idea that the cops would kill one of their own as an outlandish invention. Leaving aside that Beverly passed two lie detector tests, his account fits with the fact that at the time of Faulkner’s killing in 1981, there were at least three ongoing federal investigations into police corruption in Philadelphia, including police connections with the mob. Police working as FBI informants were victims of hits in the early 1980s. A former federal prosecutor acknowledged that the Feds had a police informant whose brother was a cop, just as Faulkner had a brother who was a cop. A sworn affidavit by Donald Hersing, a former informant in an FBI investigation into police corruption, confirms that at the time of Faulkner’s shooting the word was out that the Feds had an informant in the police force. The commanding officer of the Central Police Division, where the murder of Faulkner took place, the chief of the police Homicide Division and the ranking officer at the scene of Faulkner’s killing, Alfonzo Giordano, were all under investigation at the time on federal corruption charges. These cops were literally the chain of command in the frame-up of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Giordano had been the right-hand man for Philadelphia’s notoriously racist police chief and later mayor, Frank Rizzo. From 1966 to 1970, Giordano was in charge of the cop “Stakeout” squad, which led the police raid on the Black Panthers’ headquarters in 1970. He was also the supervisor of the 15-month police siege of MOVE’s Powelton Village house in 1977-78, which resulted in nine MOVE members being sent to prison on frame-up charges of killing a cop. Giordano knew exactly who Mumia was. The senior officer on the scene, he had both motive and opportunity to frame up Mumia for the killing of Faulkner. Giordano originated the claim that Mumia’s gun—the putative murder weapon—was lying beside him on the street. But according to police radio records, the cops were still looking for the gun some 14 minutes after hordes of police had arrived on the scene. Giordano arranged the identification of Mumia by cab driver Robert Chobert, who became a witness for the prosecution. Giordano was the central witness for the prosecution at Mumia’s pretrial hearing. But he was never called as a witness at Mumia’s trial. Shortly before the trial, he was assigned to a desk job. One working day after Mumia was convicted, Giordano resigned from the force. In 1986, Giordano copped a plea on federal charges based on his receiving tens of thousands of dollars in illegal payoffs from 1979 to 1980. He didn’t spend a day in jail.   Prosecution’s Web of Lies The prosecution’s story is that two people were on the corner of 13th and Locust where Faulkner was shot: Mumia’s brother Billy Cook and Faulkner. They claim that Mumia ran across the street when he saw his brother being beaten by Faulkner. According to police and prosecutors, Mumia shot the cop in the back, the cop shot back at Mumia and then Mumia stood over the fallen cop and shot him “execution style” several times in the head. Even a close examination of the cops’ and prosecution’s own evidence gives the lie to this scenario. A look at the “three legs” of the prosecution’s case provides not only stark confirmation of Mumia’s innocence but clear corroboration of Beverly’s testimony. The Prosecution’s Witnesses: Even with police and prosecution threats and favors at the time of the 1982 trial, no witness testified to seeing Mumia actually shoot Faulkner. Only one, Cynthia White, the prosecution’s star witness, testified that she thought she saw a gun in Mumia’s hand when he crossed the street. A prostitute working in the area, White claimed to have witnessed the events from the southeast corner of 13th and Locust. Yet the other two prosecution witnesses, as well as two defense witnesses who knew White, all denied she was at the scene during the shooting! Other prostitutes testified in subsequent court hearings that White alternately got police favors or was threatened by police in order to extract her testimony. As for Robert Chobert, at first he told police that the shooter “ran away.” After further interrogation, he changed his story, claiming that Mumia stood over Faulkner while the shots were fired and that no one ran away. A cab driver using a suspended license while on probation for felony arson, Chobert was given favors by the prosecution in exchange for his testimony. He later admitted that he never saw the shooting. The third state witness was Michael Scanlan. He initially identified Mumia as the VW driver but then claimed that the shooter ran across Locust Street, which Beverly admits that he did. He also admitted that he did not know if Mumia was the man he saw. Ballistics and Forensics: The prosecution claimed that ballistics evidence was “consistent” with Mumia’s gun being the murder weapon even while admitting that the “consistency” applied to millions of handguns. There is no evidence that Mumia’s gun was even fired that night. There was every opportunity to test Mumia’s hands, or the gun, for evidence that it had been recently fired. But according to police no such tests, which are standard operating procedure, were ever done! The Stakeout officer who claimed he picked up Mumia’s gun did not turn it over for more than two hours, providing more than ample time to have it tampered with. The Medical Examiner’s report states that Faulkner was shot with a .44 calibre bullet, yet Mumia’s gun was a .38 calibre. Although the crime lab claimed that the main bullet fragment removed from Faulkner’s head was too damaged to test, the defense team’s ballistics expert denied this. A second bullet fragment removed from the head wound simply disappeared without a trace. Evidence at the scene—bullet fragments, blood stains, the absence of divots in the sidewalk—refutes the prosecution claim that Faulkner was shot repeatedly while lying on the ground. The bullet patterns are far more consistent with multiple shooters, as Beverly testifies. A copper bullet jacket found at the scene was inconsistent with either Faulkner’s or Mumia’s guns, suggesting that a different gun was fired. Similarly, type O blood was found at the scene, but Faulkner, Mumia and Cook were all type A, suggesting that another person was present and injured. The angle of Mumia’s own wounds is impossible if he was shot while standing over Faulkner as the prosecution claimed. However, Mumia’s wounds are consistent with Beverly’s testimony that Mumia was shot by a cop at the scene. The “Confession”: The frame-up’s final leg was the claim that Mumia, lying in a pool of blood at the hospital where he was taken for treatment, shouted out that he had shot the cop. Yet the police officer assigned to guard Mumia there reported that same day that Mumia “made no comments.” In reality, he was so badly wounded, with a bullet hole through one lung, and had been so badly beaten by police on the street and at the hospital, that he could not have “shouted” anything. The “confession” was manufactured by the prosecution at a roundtable meeting with cops two months after the shooting. Priscilla Durham, a security guard, was the only hospital employee who backed up the cops’ “confession” lie. In 2003 Durham’s stepbrother Kenneth Pate swore that Durham said she was pressured by the cops to say Mumia confessed. Pate also said Durham heard Mumia say, “Get off me, get off me, they’re trying to kill me.” Mumia Abu-Jamal has always categorically maintained his innocence. As he declared in a 2001 affidavit: “I did not shoot Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. I had nothing to do with the killing of Officer Faulkner. I am innocent…. I never confessed to anything because I had nothing to confess to.” Mobilize Now to Free Mumia! The case of Mumia Abu-Jamal is an object lesson in the class nature of the capitalist state. Its justice system is class- and race-biased to the core. The cops and courts who framed up this innocent man, the living tomb of the prison system in which he is jailed, the executioner who stands ready to kill—all are instruments of organized violence used to preserve the rule of the capitalist class through the forcible suppression of the working class and oppressed. Smashing this racist frame-up machine will require a socialist revolution that overturns the capitalist system. Demands for a “new trial” which have been raised by liberals, self-proclaimed socialist organizations, black nationalists and others have fed illusions that there can be justice in the capitalist courts. Those illusions demobilized a movement of millions around the world in Mumia’s defense. The time is now to rekindle mass protest—nationally and internationally—on behalf of Mumia. Mumia’s freedom will not be won through reliance on the rigged “justice” system or on capitalist politicians, whether Democrat, Republican or Green. The power that can turn the tide is the power of millions—working people, anti-racist youth, death penalty abolitionists—united in struggle to demand the freedom of this innocent man. Crucial to this perspective is the mobilization of the labor movement, whose social power derives from its ability to shut down production. As we have stated since we first took up Mumia’s defense in the mid 1980s, what’s necessary are labor-centered united-front actions, generating effective protest across a spectrum of political beliefs while assuring all the right to have their own say. The time is now to make Mumia’s case a rallying cry against the racist death penalty, against black oppression, against government repression. Raise your voice and organize now in your union, on your campus, in your community to demand: Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Abolish the racist death penalty! —Partisan Defense Committee, 27 May 2006

An Open Letter to Mumia Abu-Jamal Supporters-A Personal Commentary (April 2008)



The Partisan Defense Committee has passed "An Open Letter to All Supporters of Mumia‘s Freedom" to this writer. Those few who might not know of the torturous legal battles to free this innocent man can find further information at the above-mentioned Partisan Defense site. I make my own comments below.

Normally I pass information about the case of political prisoner Mumia abu-Jamal on without much comment because the case speaks for itself. The case has been front and center in international labor defense struggles for over two decades. However, in light of the adverse ruling by a majority of a federal Third Circuit Court of Appeal panel in March 2008 that affirmed Mumia’s 1982 conviction for first-degree murder of a police officer and left the only issue for decision that of resentencing to either reinstate his original death sentence or keep him imprisoned for life without parole I have some things to say about this fight.

Occasionally, in the heat of political battle some fights ensue around strategy that after the smoke has cleared, upon reflection, leave one with more sorrow than anger. Not so today. Today I am mad. Am I mad about the irrational decision by the majority of the Third Circuit panel in Mumia’s case? Yes, but when one has seen enough of these cases over a lifetime then one realizes that, as the late sardonic comic and social commentator Lenny Bruce was fond of saying, in the Hall of Justice the only justice is in the halls.

What has got me steamed is the obvious bankruptcy of the strategy, if one can use this term, of centering Mumia’s case on the question of a new trial in order to get the ‘masses’- meaning basically parliamentary liberal types interested in supporting the case. This by people who allegedly KNOW better. The bankruptcy of this strategy, its effects on Mumia’s case and the bewildered response of those who pedaled it as good coin is detailed in the above-mentioned Open Letter. Read it.

Today, in reaction to the Third Circuit court’s decision, everyone and their brother and sister are now calling for Mumia’s freedom. At a point where he is between a rock and a hard place. However, it did not have to be that way. Mumia was innocent in 1982 and he did not stop being innocent at any point along this long road. Freedom for Mumia was (and is) the correct slogan in the case. A long line of political criminal cases, starting in this country with that of the Haymarket Martyrs if not before, confirms that simple wisdom. Those who consciously pedaled this weak ‘new trial’ strategy as a get rich quick scheme now have seen the chickens come home to roost. And Mumia pays the price.

I would point out two factors that made a ‘retrial’ strategy in the case of an innocent man particularly Pollyanna-ish for those honest militants who really believed that Mumia’s case was merely a matter of the American justice system being abused and therefore some court would rectify this situation if enough legal resources were in place. First, it is illusory that somehow, as exemplified in this case, a higher court system would remedy this egregious wrong. Long ago I remember a lawyer, I believe that it might have been the late radical lawyer Conrad Lynn no stranger to political defense work, telling a group of us doing defense work for the Black Panthers, that all these judges belong to the same union. They do not upset each other’s work except under extreme duress.

Second, and this is where the ‘wisdom’ of the reformists about reaching the ‘masses’ by a stagest theory of defense work (fight for retrial first, then freedom) turns in on them. As witness the list of names of those who have signed the Partisan Defense Committee’s call for Mumia’s freedom, excepting professional liberals and their hangers –on, those interested in Mumia’s case (or any leftwing political defense case) will sign on just as easily for freedom as retrial. Thus, opportunism does not pay, even in the short haul. That said, Free Mumia- say it loud, say it proud.

*****When The Bourgeoisie Was In Full Flower- With The French Painter Caillebotte In Mind

*****When The Bourgeoisie Was In Full Flower- With The French Painter Caillebotte In Mind 

 

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

Yeah, the Baron, Baron Haussmann if you need a name to go with the damage, the social damage done, had done a good job, a damn good job of breaking up beloved Paris with his squeaky clean street lines and wide boulevards. Yeah, changed the face of Paris, the Paris of squalid throw your leavings out the window and heaven help who is below, and heaven help what awful thing was thrown down to the trash-filled streets. The Paris of funny crooked cul de sac streets, which reflected the add-ons over centuries to make a great city from the piss-pot small town back in the Middle Ages when the university was the center of attraction and the good bourgeois in embryo were trying to hold off the barbarians, the wayward no account peasant drifters who snuck off the land, or tried to in order to sulk and menace in the shadows down by the Seine, the river of life and of intrigue.

The Paris of the small craftsman working his trade in some lonely workshop, maybe an indentured apprentice by his side if the craft was skilled enough to warrant such service, his “home” and hearth in the back rooms where the dutiful wife and undutiful screaming children scratched out their pitiful existence. Said craftsman working furiously always brow-beaten worrying about being edged out by Monsieur So and So with plenty of capital and fifty men in his employ underselling him by virtue of economy of scale (or just plain greed at having anybody even a single slave craftsman in his “invisible hand” market place). The Paris too of the jack-roller, the pick-pocket, the wharf rats, the tavern-dwellers, the drifters, the grifters, and the midnight sifters along the shallow shadows of that same beloved Seine     

He, Jean Villon, was called Jean-bon out of respect for his courage under fire in the hell-hole barricade days of 1848  when he and his neighbors, all working-men, held out to the last when the vicious petty-bourgeois who would have benefited most from victory deserted the barricades and he and his took to their fallen losses and jail cells with equanimity (he and his comrades ever after called ‘48ers and no further explanation was necessary, none what-so-ever in any street or boulevard in the town). And called Jean-bon as well for his general good humor when he was not talking politics or scheming the next plot that would bring on the newer world that he and his brethren were seeking. This morning he had had to laugh about the changes in the Rue Madeleine, the urine-laned street where he grew up, about the smell to high heaven of tanning chemicals, rough blacksmith coals, clothe dyes, slaughtered cattles and poultries. Laughed too that in those days, the days before the Baron got the itch (Baron dreams prodded on by ’89 dreams of san-culottes crowds demanding his head on a platter, or maybe just his head any way they could get it preferably via the people’s justice of the guillotine and more recent close calls in ‘48) none of the government’s men dared to enter those quarters even to look for the treasonous or seditious whoever was in power was always nervously pacing the floor about (it did not matter-king-premier-emperor-they all nervously paced their respective floors).

Yeah, back then nothing but crooked little streets leading to harmless little cafes, where he, workingman Villon held “court” with the riff-raff so-called of the old society. Calmly and cautiously quartered where no king’s men would bother to penetrate for they might not come back. Villon descended in some cousin-age degree never quite figured out back to the 15^th century from the outlaw poet mad monk bastard saint Francois Villon who wrote longing "exile in his own country" verse with one hand and stole whatever was not nailed down with the other a fact which Jean never tired of pointing out when back in the day, back in ‘48 on the barricades when it counted comrades would wonder whether his revolutionary energies were flagging and he would drag out his pedigree to small-mouthed scoffs and tittles.

Yeah, the Baron was a slick one tearing down the old quarters to let the rising petty-bourgeois have their elegant apartments tucked away from the steamy stinking markets, the riff-raff cafes, the shadow men of the Seine. Let the bourgeoisie laugh in their clubs about how the riff-raff, meaning their working-men, those who slaved for them, those they had fired for being what some wag called “master-less men” for their habit of robbing said masters whenever the shadows fell, and robbing the once innocent peasant girls who followed in their train and cast their fate with the lot of their virtue, would get a belly-full of lead from the phalanx encircling infantry the next time they tried to pull up brick number one in order to build a barricade.

Although for a while when Thiers, that wizened troll who never uttered anything but treacherous remarks and never stopped for one minute to give the orders to  send whatever troops against the barricades which remained loyal to keep him in power. Rammed those troops against the brave Paris communards of blessed memory back in 1871 when the frightened bourgeoisie realized that the barricades could still be constructed when the working-men rose up in righteous anger at the betrayals put upon them. (Those communards like their earlier brethren of ’48 called communards and no further explanation was necessary, none what-so-ever in any street or boulevard in the town.)

But those days were long gone now. The Baron had won, had won his victory over the riff-raff and Jean-bon Villon knew it would be a long time before the blood of the communards dried. Dried and avenged.  

 

Now the picture before Villon as he walked along Rue Madeline a place foreign to his eyes this rainy Sunday morning is that of prosperous petty bourgeois walking under the shadows of their handsome umbrellas along the well-trodden brick-laid slippery street taking in the sullen airs of the day. Each pair, male and female from a rough look at the scene, in their own world heading perhaps to some café breakfast (under awnings this morning) maybe going to the gardens up the road. Villon, the old revolutionary, looking down and noticing that every spattered brick had been inlaid (although that never stopped them from tearing them up in the old days), noticed that  as one wag put it that now the streets were big enough for all of Paris without regard to class to walk and fete wherever they cared to. Here is the waggish joke though, except for some ragman with his cur of a dog his sort were nary to be seen on these wet streets and intersections. Yeah, the Baron did his work well.      

Victory To The Verizon Workers-Support Thea Picket Lines

American Opportunity

Verizon workers: 'Why I'm on strike'

by Aaron Smith   @AaronSmithCNN April 15, 2016: 12:45 PM ET

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Thousands of Verizon workers walk off the job

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At least 36,000 Verizon workers have been on strike since Wednesday after failing to reach a new labor agreement by the contract's deadline.

Among the union workers' list of complaints: the offshoring of thousands of jobs to workers abroad, outsourcing work to low-wage, non-union contractors and the closing of call centers in the U.S. But one of their chief complaints is about being forced to work in locations far from home for months at a time.

Verizon lineman Ting Chin, who already commutes more than 80 miles from Poughkeepsie, NY, to Manhattan, said that several of his colleagues were sent to Buffalo, New York -- almost 400 miles away -- for a long-term job, a fate that he says he narrowly avoided.
"They want to pick and choose who they want to send and they want to be able to do it at any time," he said.
When asked about the Buffalo assignments, Verizon (VZ, Tech30) spokesman Raymond McConville said "I think they may be exaggerating the distance a bit."
"We've been asking for more flexibility in how we can move employees to where they're most needed," said McConville. "For example, right now, if there's a big job in Manhattan, we can't take technicians in Hoboken and send them across the river to help out. We need common sense flexibilities like that added to our union contracts."
McConville wouldn't confirm specifics on how far employees would be moved for work or for how long. But he did say the company would take the option to move employees for long periods of time "off the table once they sign a contract."
Related: 36,000 Verizon workers walk off the job
The company added that the workers have a wage and benefit package that averages more than $130,000 a year. McConville said the employees "make very modest contributions" to their healthcare premiums, but the company "bears the vast majority of all employee healthcare costs and will continue to do so."
Here's what workers have to say:

Verizon striker Dorothy Monsanto

Name: Dorothy Monsanto
What I do: Field technician
Base pay: $82,500
How long I've worked at Verizon: 22 years
Why I'm on strike: "The company wants to send us over 100 miles away from our families to work at a given moment whenever they feel like it."

Verizon stiker Romeo Malone

Name: Romeo Malone
What I do: Cable maintenance field technician
Base pay: $82,500
How long I've worked at Verizon: 22 years
Why I'm on strike: "Job security, cost of living increase. Nobody wants to just be told you've got to go someplace you never heard of. They want to be able to send you another 100 miles for your work location."

Verizon striker Patrick Rooney

Name: Patrick Rooney
What I do: Cable maintenance field technician
Base pay: $82,500
How long I've worked at Verizon: 19 years
Why I'm on strike: "Because they want to take my benefits. They want to take me anywhere from Massachusetts to Virginia at a moment's notice for three months at a time. [Rooney also complained that Verizon wants to freeze pensions at 30 years even though it makes multiple billions of dollars a year in profits.] "I don't know how they're crying poverty."

CNNMoney (New York) First published April 15, 2016: 12:45 PM ET

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In The Time Of The Pixies- Frank Capra’s Mister Deeds Goes To Town

In The Time Of The Pixies- Frank Capra’s Mister Deeds Goes To Town

 

DVD Review

 

By Sam Lowell

 

Mister Deeds Goes To Town, starring Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, directed by Frank Capra, 1936

Recently in a review of a film later than the one under review, Gary Cooper’s role in Meet John Doe where he plays a serious victim of the Great Depression raging in the 1930s as hobo down on his luck who is desperate in get out from under, I noted that Mister Cooper was the epitome of the old time values fair-haired Midwestern, “ah shucks,” boy that such roles required, that audiences, female audiences could relate to. Mister Cooper brings that same “gee whizz” vitality to the role of Brother Deeds in Mister Deeds Goes To Town although here he is spouting forth the old time Yankee virtues since he was plucked out of Vermont in this one. But I would contend that those old-time values are the same ones that had been high-lighted in the latter film as our intrepid crusader railed against the strangeness of big city life (the “goes to town,” New York City life railed against in the former movie as well, an easy moving target of biting social commentary then as now.  

Here’s how it played out this time though. Brother Deeds sitting unknowingly in his bucolic little Vermont retreat playing tuba and doing other small town good deeds had his life turned around when he as the seemingly sole heir to a playboy killed in a car accident was uprooted to the evil empire, to New Jack City, by members of the scheming law firm that had handled the decease’s accounts. That was their first mistake, bringing him to the big city to be dazzled. The second was to underestimate a so-called “rube” when they tried to pull the wool over his eyes about how and what he should do with his new found fortune. The third was to, well, not protect him from the reporters, at least one reporter, Babe, played by Jean Arthur.    

 No question then, as now, a guy who grabbed the brass ring of twenty million dollars was hot news although now it would have to be about  twenty billion to raise any interests. The law firm was able to keep the wolves of the fourth estate away except the wily Babe. She began to write stories about him on the sly while he was falling for her. Not good, not good when after he was told who she was and what she was doing, he sensed she was just for the main chance. Not good too when he decided to flee the big burg and head back to forlorn little Vermont.

That would have been that except a distraught farmer cornered him in his mansion before he fled and bewailed him for his high lifestyle. Hey, that was not our fair-haired boy, not in hard scrabble times 1930s when people were in serious trouble to provide themselves with three square a day. So our boy, our boy Longfellow Deeds, decided to use his monies to do a personal “redistribute the wealth” scheme by using his fortune to set farmers up on the land again (the old forty acres and a mule that had run through farms belts of the world since the first field was seeded.) Of course this action had the corrupt law firm (a bunch of Cedars and another guy okay but corrupt law firm sets the right tone) up in arms since Deeds’ account was being milked by them to cover their own malfeasance.

The corrupt law firms’ strategy: have this knucklehead declared mentally ill and throw away the key. But to do that they needed to take him before a competency court another mistake (rather than say having a “hit man” take him out). Despite every ploy Brother Deeds had their number, outfoxed them, and gave the big city lawyers the boot. Gave New York City the back of his back. Oh yeah and swooped up Babe too. Not Cooper or Capra’s best but okay, okay.        

The Wind Howled Like A Hammer-The Trials And Tribulations Of Sand-Bagger Johnson

The Wind Howled Like A Hammer-The Trials And Tribulations Of Sand-Bagger Johnson

“Jesus, it is cold as a witch’s tit out here this morning, I can’t get my hands warm for love nor money. I was surprised that after they called a “frost delay” yesterday they didn’t this morning since it seems just as cold as it was then, ’’ frozen Lucky Pierre told the collected gathering on the dreaded wind-swirled first tee as the first foursome of the day went into its round of golf, nine holes as usual in the early morning, at the fabled Pine Pond Golf Course. That gathering included the lanky Casey, the wiry Zowey (formerly Zowy until he objected that the moniker did not show him enough dignity, enough literary dignity if you can believe that, and hence the added “e.” What price vanity.), and the fake-feeble Sand-Bagger (whom we have agreed for non-literary reasons, for the ecologically sound reason of saving cyber-ink to call Sandy after an initial introduction) as they waited on Sandy to do the ancient rite of tossing the tee into the air to determine the day’s teams.

Of course Lucky Pierre with his little “cold weather frost delay” screed was merely trying to cover up for the fact that he was dead-ass wrong about what the pro and the greens-keeper would do this bitter Sunday. He had called in to inform the pro that he would be late because he assumed that there would be a frost delay leaving Casey and Sandy cooling their heels waiting on his lordship. On top of that Zowey had pulled the same lamo excuse, or some variation on that theme claiming he too was late for wrongly guessing about the “frost delay.” Justice, even a smidgen of rough justice in this wicked old world, would have dictated that Casey and Sandy be partners that day and give the late-bloomers a thrashing that they would not soon forget. As luck would have it Sandy drew the injury-prone Zowey and so needed to curb his tongue since the coin of the realm trumped [no pun intended] any residue distress at the late start.           

In a previous screed Sandy had mentioned that sometime when he had time he would give the reader “the skinny” on what was what about frost delays. Since this match was “in the bag” this is the time to deal with this critical question. Of course the average citizen, the average sane golfer for that matter doesn’t have one reason in hell to care anything about the arcane subject of frost delays. But for the hearty all-weather, all-season golfers such as our itinerate foursome the question is a matter of life or death, well, maybe not that far but at least a question of whether or not they would play a round of golf that day. There had always been much speculation among the group, and by others as well, about why one cold day there was a delay and another similar day as had occurred that weekend the play went off on schedule. Casey speculated that it had to do with dew points and clouds. Zowey started talking about winds, clouds and shadows, plus the placement of the moon. Lucky Pierre the one scientist in the group started talking about Zen. Sandy cut all that speculation short with the insightful suggestion that the pro and greens-keeper probably “flipped a tee” to determine whether to call a delay or not. Meaning in Sandy’s enfeebled cold-addled brain that one or the other, or both, wanted an extra roll in the hay with his companion. Sandy insisted that was as reasonable as any of the other wind-addled ideas.

But enough of the mysteries of frost delays for we are now into consequences. There is no need to dwell on the match, or at least the first match since as Sandy had perceptively figured out the thing was a foregone conclusion once the pairings were announced. It is almost a shame to speak of the beating that Casey and Pierre took that morning-let the results speak for themselves rather than to dredge out the painful past hole by hole. Sandy and Zowey beat them six ways to Sunday. Beat them in six holes without working up a sweat. So enough of that.

Here is the funny thing, funny to non-golfers (and those who could give a fig about the subject) but no money exchanged hands that morning, no Abes moved around wallets. (That hard fact will act as summary for Casey). That is where the “press” mentioned in a previous screed comes in. Lucky Pierre called a “press” (seconded by Casey) for the final three holes and wouldn’t you know it but Zowey and Sandy booted the ball down the fairway on the ninth hole and the lucky stiff Casey had his one good hole of the day and saved the day for the frozen pair. Damn. Oh well Sandy said he would explain the intricacies of the press something and it would have nothing to do with dew points, weather-forecasting, cloud cover or Zen. Selah.

Ban Cluster Bombs: Rally this coming Monday April 18 in Providence, RI

 

VFP Smedley via smedleyvfp

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Some of us are planning up join up for this rally.  If people want to carpool, call or email Doug Stuart at: 617.967.0751 & dstuart698@aol.com.

Douglas --  On April 18, peace activists from across New England will gather in front of Textron Industries headquarters in Providence, Rhode Island, to call on the company to stop selling cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia that it is using to kill civilians in Yemen! Sign our petition to Textron Industries CEO Scott C. Donnelly asking Textron to stop selling cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia! Textron is the manufacturer of cluster bombs that are sold to Saudi Arabia for its war of aggression on the people of Yemen. A total of 118 countries have banned cluster munitions due to the threat they pose to nearby civilians at the time of attack and afterward. Even worse, Textron’s weapons fail to meet the standards for malfunction rates set in U.S. export law – according to Human Rights Watch – so their sale to Saudi Arabia is both illegal and will leave unexploded munitions scattered across Yemen, threatening civilians for years to come. Saudi Arabia is committing war crimes in Yemen and has created a humanitarian crisis. Yet, Textron continues to provide its bombs for the war, even after more than 3,000 innocent Yemeni civilians have been killed. President Obama will visit Saudi Arabia next week and should press the Saudi government to permanently end the attacks against Yemen. At the protest on Monday, activists will attempt to hand-deliver your signature to Textron personnel.Sign our petition to CEO Scott C. Donnelly TODAY calling on Textron to stop sending these horrible weapons to Saudi Arabia! In solidarity,Alice, Alli, Ariel, Chelsea, Janet, Jodie, Marwa, Medea, Michaela, Nancy, Rebecca, Sam and Tighe P.S. Once you’ve signed the Textron petition, sign our petition asking President Obama to meet with Saudi human rights activists during his trip next week! P.P.S. Show your support for demilitarization and bringing our war dollars home with a CODEPINK t-shirt! Have your change make change! MyChange rounds up your credit and debit card purchases to the next dollar, and sends your spare change to CODEPINK! Click here to get started.

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The Heirs Take The Airs-With “Godfather” Dashiell Hammett In Mind

The Heirs Take The Airs-With “Godfather” Dashiell Hammett In Mind 

By Zack James

All through the years that they had known each other Alex Slater would either meet Fred Sims at Dolly’s Diner or go up to his office on the fifth floor of the Tappan Building in downtown Riverdale and share Fred’s stashed whiskey bottle, Johnny Walker Red, and Fred would regale him with stories, real stories about being a private detective. That Dolly’s Diner habit had actually started when they both would take a coffee break around the same time. Fred from his Fred Sims Detective Agency (although all years that Alex had known Fred he had never seen any other operative working out of the office so he was befuddled by the agency designation but in order not to ruffle Fred’s feathers he never mentioned the question) and Alex from his Superior Printing, a full service print shop on the first floor of that building.

Alex had started the first conversation by expressing his concerns about how Travis Realty, the company that managed the historic Tappan Building (it had been until more recently when the Skyler Building went up on the edge of town the tallest building in town at eight stories), had let the place go to rot and ruin (not cleaning the lobby frequently enough, restrooms either, faulty elevators, worse broken windows not repaired and so on) unlike when the builder, Sam Stuart, ran the operation. Fred had replied that at least Travis Realty had kept the rent the same for a number of years, important to him when business the past several years had bene slow. Fred said his office was mainly to get out of the house, get away from some nagging girlfriend of the moment whom he living with and he didn’t give a fig about the appearance of the place since he was either called out on a job or if a new client came in his or her situation was desperate enough that the surrounding didn’t mean a thing. Alex had replied that since he was on the first floor and there was always foot traffic going through he needed to have a little front.

That riff finished Alex offered to buy Fred his coffee and crullers that day and Fred always a little low on dough said “sure thing” (as Alex would find out a very worn from use expression of Fred’s. And so that started what became a common meeting time and place (although Fred when in the chips would spring for the refreshments). Very occasionally they would have dinner there if they both were working late for some reason since both loved Dolly’s meat loaf special complete with soup appetizer and bread pudding for dessert.      

The “up in Fred’s office” part came later, and the bringing out of the Johnny Walker Red even later than that. After a couple of months of meeting at Dolly’s Alex had expressed his love of fictional private detective stories by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Ellery Queen, Ross MacDonald, Jack Sommers, Sal Pollo, guys like that, hard-boiled no nonsense detectives who operated out of their own personal code of honor, didn’t mind tilting at windmills and liked a few skirts hanging on their arms and bottles of whiskey in their snarly low left-hand desk drawer. Fred laughed, laughed the knowing laugh of a real private dick, knowing that all of that except the convenient whiskey bottle was bullshit (another common Fred expression). So he invited Alex up for a shot (or two or more) and eventually some real stories about his life as a detective, a career that when Alex and Fred first met at Dolly’s had spanned twenty-one years, and counting.      

Most of Fred’s stories, the good ones, the ones Alex remembered were from the 1950s heyday of the “peeping Tom” work he did for husbands or wives trying to get the “skinny” on who their partner was screwing (since it usually was not them for one reason or another Fred would say usually a good reason) in some off-the-wall hotel, motel, no-tell. It was nasty but profitable work since he had connections with lots of hotel dicks and motel owners (who would tell him who was residing on the premises who did not look like they had tied the knot-for a price, a cut of his action). But that business, that part of the business had dried up when the damn no-fault divorce stuff came in and you could give any unverified reason including some vacuous “mental cruelty” charge and wrap it up in a couple of sessions before a judge. Damn “no fault.”

The repo jobs were boring as even Fred admitted, as were the skip traces, trying to get guys and dames who didn’t want to be found found for the client, usually a wife looking for dough for whatever reason. Once in a while though doing a missing person’s case had some style particularly if the deal involved finding a missing heir, somebody who was supposed to come into dough when somebody passed on. The Galton Case was like that, the style, or rather the off-the-wall way it turned out. Alex remembered that Fred told that one with a certain relish although he didn’t make a dime on the case in the end through his own fault.

Here’s the twist right away. Jack and Sean Galton had come into the office asking Fred if he could find their second-cousin Blaze Trumbo for them. At first they were cagey about what they wanted and Fred was about to turn it down when they told him they would make it worth his while to find that cousin since he was loaded, had made a ton of money in Arabian oil. What they had figured, or though they had figured out, was that since given the slim facts they had they were the only heirs, or rather had the best claim to be the only heirs of cousin Blaze. Fred, against his better judgment but seeing work in front of him after weeks of no work and a ten percent “finder’s fee” agreed to look into the matter, for a short while, very short while once they explained that they didn’t have much cash to pay him upfront. A few days’ work led him to a couple of leads that would lead to a couple more leads to Trumbo and so he was hooked. Saw money coming out of his ears.

Working the leads Fred was able to hone in on Trumbo at his upstate New York home. A place near Saratoga, up in Mayfair swells summer racing country. He was able to get in to see Trumbo by the guise of representing clients, Arab clients was the implication, who had money that was supposed to go to him but they did not want to go through the usual international banking connections because of some tax liability. Funny, Trumbo as rich as he was, and something Fred noticed the few other times he was involved with anything like real money, was all ears, was ready to move heaven and earth to get more filthy lucre. That’s how the rich stay rich he figured, be constantly greedy for the next dollar.

Once he got into the house though he told Blaze the real people he represented. He was surprised how poorly Trumbo looked, looked gaunt and not in good shape. Also how old he was considering that the Galton brothers were maybe forty tops. Strangely laying out the scenario for Blaze did not ruffle his feathers one bit. The old man said he would be pleased to see his long lost cousins, assuming they were actually his relatives.         

Well the long and short of it was that the brothers were able to establish their bone fides and Trumbo welcomed them into his house with open arms. Here’s the beauty of the story, beauty even though Fred never made a dollar on the case. The old man was busted, the house he was living in he was doing so as a caretaker for an old crony. What had happened that a few too wells went into the tank, went dry, that and the Arabs deciding that they wanted the oil profits strictly for themselves and would hire help  after they took over Trumbo’s’ operations. Needless to say he never said word one about this until it came out later when everything went hooey. What Blaze had done, had been doing all his life really was con the brothers out of all of their dough. He used every dodge in the book to get then to lend him what he called “temporary” funds since his money was tied up in foreign lands just then, not to worry. Said he needed dough to go on trips to get this or that deal finished up. They gave it without question until the end. They had laid out something like one hundred and fifty thousand dollars over about six months, maybe seven. Then word came that Blaze, who really was as sick as Fred had suspected, had passed away in Istanbul.

They brothers were beside themselves figuring that hundred thou or so would come back to them many times over. Then as they didn’t hear from any lawyers for a while, didn’t hear about funeral arrangements they brought Fred back into the case to find out what was what. What was what was that Blaze was buried in a potter’s field in Istanbul.  There was no will, no lawyer to contact, nothing. And Fred had all of nothing too.